DIGITAL WORKPLACE
Empowering communities through educational tools
with the goal to drive change for millions of children every day, across the globe.
ROLE : Design and Research Lead, Stakeholder Engagement, Design for Scale
HIGHLIGHTS : User Experience Design | Internationalization | Design for Scale
Pics: Courtesy of UNICEF
Focussing on building touch points to streamline business processes, operational efficiency and enhancing user experience, built on participatory research methods to guide organisational direction for content, communication and collaboration. .
An organisation having 190+ offices with a 70+ years of institutional knowledge, I led the design team through the project lifecycle - from project strategy, research planning, stakeholder engagement, implementation and scalability of the platform and it’s tools, with a focus on design inclusivity, internationalization and user-driven approach.
PROCESS.
The project was developed on 4 pillars using iterative design and co-creating with stakeholders and users at every stage, to balance business and user needs.
EXPLORE - Vision, Strategy, Research Mapping and Analysis.
ENGAGE - Engagement strategy for the each phase
ITERATE - Iterative prototyping for digital touch points
SCALE - Training, scalability and roll out for 193 offices.
KICK OFF
Vision, Strategy, Research Mapping and Analysis.
Research, Principles and Strategy for the project
Improving digital systems for staff
Who? Why? How? Where? What? were used as the prompts for the research question.
Why?
Research Interviews were conducted with the identified user groups and behaviours and key insights were identified.
Who are the users? Who does what?
Organisation Structure was mapped to understand the different roles and functions. Below is an example for a country office.
“"A gateway to build relationships on the field”
“Our emergency specialists are given USB drives to carry SSOPs even though we have array of tools”
“Always on the move, how do we learn quickly”
“Each time there is a Cholera outbreak, we deal with each, as if for the first time”
What is in the current ecosystem?
The current ecosystem of usage of sites, tools, links were mapped to identify patterns.
How are the different nodes of network intersecting? How are current tools used?
Tracking INFORMATION FLOWs to know who interacts with whom?
Mapping INTERACTION FLOWs to understand who does what ?
Where are the nodes of interaction?
Mapping Organization Structure - Analysing through the lens of information flow and interaction flow and the nodes that overlap in the network.
How might we enhance collaboration in the workplace
for driving efficiency and effectiveness ?
When do the interactions happen?
The analysis also included time based systems, to identify community activity zones and tasks over a period of time.
Time vs Tasks
These user groups were then mapped against time spent and daily digital touch points, to identify primary and secondary users for building personas.
What are the thematic areas of collaboration?
Text Mining and Themes:
Evaluating the unstructured data sources to find thematic areas of work.
Unstructured data being what are topics of conversation, people’s mobility to identify patterns and data driven insights. This helped to further categorize, cluster, and annotate the collected information as an input to the information structure.
Key Insights were derived from text mining exercise.
1. Users frequented same network groups and content areas in a seasonal time.
2. Surge repeated requests were made for emergency usage.
3. Pattern to download vast amounts of content and then shared further within a community.
4. Single entry point of access.
Role Mapping
User Journeys
Information Architecture
Governance
Engagement during the design phase.
The engagement strategy was a 3 pronged approach.
Starting from engagement at the discovery phase.
Participatory workshops during design and build phase
Regular feedback loops during the implementation and scale phase.
USER JOURNEYS, SCENARIOS and TOUCHPOINTS
Building on WHAT are the interaction points - over time, tasks and behaviours - we were able to establish the touchpoints critical for a collaborative space.
During workshops, groups were given prompts to map journeys, identify key scenarios that enhance collaboration.
A detailed user journey was then mapped out to identify actions and touchpoints.
ENGAGEMENT Strategy and GOVERNANCE Workflows.
The different levels of engagement for the users and governance for workflows.
This involved enabling communities to engage through a multi-tier model.
TOUCHPOINTS AND ROADMAP
Prioritising content for the multiple touchpoints, to identify key roll out for the product roadmap was conducted over subsequent interactions.
PROTOTYPES AND TESTING
The inputs from workshops were taken to build quick prototypes and iterated in the consequent workshops while testing along with users.
For consistency in experience across the different touchpoints and channels, and building on the design principles, accessibility standards and usability guidelines. Templates, User Guides, Toolkits, Resource Centre and regular trainings were designed. Each template was based on the needs of the type and work of the office. These templates were modular and based on three key needs - Communicate, Collaborate and Initiate.
Through iterative feedback, it was identified that people wanted bite-sized guidance as opposed to large size user guides.
Communication snippets were designed which
COMMUNITY AND SCALABILITY
COMMUNICATE | COLLABORATE | INITIATE
There were different types of communities, that led the collaboration spaces through thematic areas of work and knowledge domains.
Communities focussed on Knowledge Domain and Mentorship for the field staff.
Communities that built partnerships for raising funds and awareness.
Communities that worked at field level with governments for civic engagement.
Through “Communities of Practice” the users were shared resources for building their collaboration spaces within the guidelines. The communities further became channels to promote the platform and it’s tools. Workflows models were used for governance of content and publications.
The network analytics was utilised to identify content, engagement and adoption, which helped to build a champions and trainer groups for guiding further end-user groups.
Scaling was focussed in building communities and harnessing the strength of a local presence for a global roll out and impact.
The project was made possible through the support, engagement and enthusiasm of the staff across offices. The work was expansive and some offices are in the process of adoption.
* Due to confidentiality agreement, some content of the project has not yet been published which include -
How might we make payments more fluid and reduce all the friction in the process ?
(Humanitarian Cash Transfers)
How might we leverage on the knowledge community to share and contribute to a stronger knowledge base?
(Learning and Knowledge Exchange)
How might we improve remote employee experience?
(HR Handbook)
